Chapter 14
Chapter 14
2. The Finest Dinner
'Oh, dear.'
Baron Forman felt as though he were sitting on a bed of thorns.
'Oh, no....'
His unease had become reality.
The Warp had stopped working entirely.
The central region was a basin surrounded by mountain ranges. Monsters had begun appearing on every mountain.
The same was true of the hill marking the territory's boundary.
Even if one caught a monster, its meat could not be eaten. It was not edible.
With monsters appearing, no one could climb the mountains either. Even if a plant was edible, any grass touched by monster saliva became toxic.
And beyond that, encountering a monster at all was a matter of risking one's life.
'If only he hadn't traded the horses for dairy cows, things might have been a little better... ha.'
A month and a half earlier.
Baron Hawin had ordered that all the horses be taken to the western border and traded for dairy cows.
At first, everyone was pleased.
"We can make porridge with the milk, and butter too! The old cows can be eaten as meat!"
But problems soon appeared.
The dairy cows drank an enormous amount of water. Two dairy cows drank more water than ten people.
The wells of the Hawin Barony quickly began to run dry.
Moreover, they ate far more hay than the horses had. Baron Hawin had not known that fact.
He ordered people to go to Erenta and draw river water, but the Sears knights blocked their way.
"It was your side that first blocked the distribution on Jejel Street."
On top of that, dairy cows were sensitive to changes in environment and feed, so they produced little milk at first.
"At least horses could carry things here and there, but these... they only require more labor for cleaning and milking.... And if they eat even a little less feed, the milk stops flowing."
The workers who had originally run the horse farm were all deeply dissatisfied.
The cows devoured in less than half the time the hay that would have fed the horses for a month. After that, they had to start feeding the cows food meant for people.
"Feed them dried corn! It's what we have the most of."
The cows ate the corn well.
In fact, they ate a staggering amount.
But before long, the cows collapsed, panting for breath. The sugar in the corn had given them acidosis.
Naturally, they produced little milk. And amid all that, they drank even more water.
'In the end, we'll just slaughter those cows and be done with it.'
But even that was an optimistic thought.
The doctor warned that eating the meat of a cow that died of acidosis could cause food poisoning. The cows could not even be used for meat.
In that situation, Baron Forman, who was being fed regular meals as a guest, found it deeply uncomfortable.
Those meals were growing increasingly shabby as well....
'A mouth to feed is more burdensome than I thought.'
Baron Forman was curious.
By now, he too could no longer eat his fill.
'How is Sears faring? They wouldn't even have salt, would they?'
The knights were guarding the territorial border, so Baron Hawin's subordinates could not even go over there.
'They probably can't dig up potatoes yet, and the fish weren't biting well either. And wouldn't their grain have run out long ago?'
"Um, they say that the last time, they bought up chickens on Jejel Street. A huge number of them, too. They say they bought every chicken being sold in all those shops."
When a merchant from Jejel Street said that, Baron Hawin snapped back irritably.
"They've made a foolish choice. Where in the world would the feed for those chickens come from?"
"Well, still, they lay eggs every day."
"Then give some salt to the households in our territory and bring back chickens. We should raise some at the baronial residence as well."
"Er, each household has plenty of salt, but... whether they'll actually trade it for chickens...."
"Just force the trade if you have to!"
The chickens were noisy, so for now they were locked in a storehouse.
But unexpectedly, the chickens did not lay eggs every day. They were given barley husks, and their weight dropped and their laying stopped.
"Why aren't the chickens laying eggs?"
"Er, well.... When we fed them feed at our house, they laid one a day."
"Then where is that feed?"
"We bought it to feed them, so we don't have any now. And with the Warp down, we can't get more...."
'Then wouldn't the chickens in that territory all be at this same level!'
In this situation, he stared quietly at the invitation.
The date of the dinner he had been invited to was approaching.
'Wouldn't going just be a burden to them?'
When had Baron Forman become so self-conscious about a single meal...?
His grandson was the heir of House Nozen....
Eating meals while walking on eggshells in his old age, the old man despaired.
'Should I just not go?'
But then again, having received a formal invitation, not going would be a breach of etiquette.
He was also curious about Sears's situation, and worried....
'Fine, let me first look over that territory and decide. Whether I can go or not.'
In the end, he began disguising himself again.
'The only ones blocking movement are the people of the Hawin Barony. I can just present a forged western identification!'
Baron Forman rolled up his sleeves and slipped out of the Hawin Baronial Residence.
* * *
"Wow."
As Philip pushed aside the soil with trembling hands, round little potatoes were revealed.
A month and a half had now passed since the seed potatoes were planted. It was the minimum growing period at which new potatoes could be eaten.
Looking at the dirt-covered potatoes, the corners of my mouth rose on their own.
'It's a success.'
They were still only the size of a finger, but there were quite a lot of them. It was clear that with a little more time, they would grow plump. The healthy leaves and firm tubers promised a bountiful harvest.
"They need to be peeled and cooked thoroughly."
Just in case, I emphasized this to the head chef.
"They're still immature, so dig up only what we'll eat today, including the residents' share. Tell them we'll give them tomorrow's potatoes tomorrow."
Even early-harvest potatoes normally took two months to fully mature. But potatoes were edible enough to harvest from around now.
It had been a month and a half since the territory was isolated. What we had was a month's worth of grain.
"We have to last a month and a half on this. Let's eat sparingly."
I had told the kitchen early on.
"But we'll have eggs, and before long we'll be able to eat chicken too."
We had bought a large number of chickens from the start.
I instructed them to mix ground river clam shells into rice bran and wheat bran. It was chicken feed.
"Why mix in clam shells?"
"They need calcium. Once we have eggshells, we'll grind those up and mix them in too."
And I had the knights let the chickens out into the potato field or by the river during the day.
The chickens caught and ate larvae on their own. It was a source of protein.
Normally we would have used commercially distributed chicken feed, but right now this was the best option.
But even that gave them a steady supply of the nutrients they needed, and the chickens laid one egg each day without fail.
"I'll give you other ingredients too."
A lettuce patch appeared on the roof of the marquess's residence.
'No land should sit idle.'
There was one household that had harvested lettuce seeds in early spring. Lettuce was the most common crop in the small fields of riverside territories.
Lettuce grew quickly and was easy to raise. Above all, lettuce could be cut and eaten repeatedly.
Besides that, various other things were coming in. Namely....
"My lady! They say salt came in the most again today!"
"Another basket of perilla seeds has arrived!"
They were foodstuffs being smuggled in from Hawin territory.
The moment I heard Dalia say they had "decided to raise dairy cows," I had foreseen this situation.
'Dairy cows drink a lot of water.'
Moreover, dairy cows are sensitive to environmental changes.
They were not livestock that people who had never raised dairy cows could simply bring in and keep.
'They definitely won't get much milk, and they'll run short of water.'
People cannot live when water runs short.
And both Jejel Street and the Beron region had been part of the Sears Marquisate until a month and a half ago. It was obvious they would come to the Erenta River for water as if nothing had changed.
'That's why I stationed knights there. To make sure they could never take water.'
Of course, I wasn't truly refusing them water. I had only prohibited it officially.
"Officially, it will be forbidden. But giving it secretly is fine. Just make it conditional."
I called together the residents of all fifty households and spoke.
Though they were now divided, they had all actually lived as close neighbors.
"Tell them they have to bring something to feed the knights as a bribe. And Baron Hawin must never hear about this."
Since there were only about fifty households, managing them was easy.
"Listen carefully to what's happening in that territory too. Even if it's another territory now, no one should starve to death."
When I heard the news that the dairy cows had collapsed after eating corn, I deliberately had word sent to the doctor in that region.
"You mustn't carelessly eat the meat of a dairy cow that died of acidosis. You'll get food poisoning."
Dairy cows were livestock with a long history. Much had been studied and recorded about them.
Moreover, the dairy cows here were more vulnerable to acidosis than those on Earth in my previous life.
I was not kind enough to go out of my way to tell Dalia, "Dairy cows won't work." But I did not want innocent people to die.